Intro to Frankenstein
- Mary Shelley published this book in 1818 and she was a teenager when she started
- She was born after a period of GREAT change in Europe that was known as the Age of Enlightenment
- Isaac Newton – Principia Mathematica 1687 – he was a genius, scientist, philosopher, invented calculus, outlined the concepts of gravity, and such other as this
- What? The Catholic Church? What might this institution have thought out Newton?
- Such thinkers challenge Biblical knowledge and church doctrine
- At the beginning (or so) of the 18th Century, a number of other thinkers started coming out with new ideas – the root of their ideas was called Enlightenment – Kant (a philosopher) said that it was “the freedom to use one’s own intelligence”
- This began a whole new focus on REASON – observing, thinking, questioning, challenging, proving
- This creates a whole new culture of change
- Odd moment of Fact – coffeehouses – these “shops” or whatever started and people went there to talk and think and argue and it was a part of culture for people to be smart, and to do things that were interesting and write about them
- A question someone might ask might be: why is the king the king?
- At its core was a critical questioning of traditional institutions, customs, and morals, and a strong belief in rationality and science.
- These beliefs led to a lot of upheaval and wacky ideas – eg Galvani and the electric frog’s leg
- American Revolution – 1776 – Britain ran the country and the thinkers revolted – hey, why should the king get our tax money?
- French Revolution – 1789 – the peasants rose up and cut off a lot of heads of aristocrats - (the high class) – one of the crazy new ideas – people need to be treated fairly – hey, maybe we need to help those less fortunate! – hey, maybe the poor don’t like it like that!
- Late 1700s – hey, maybe women aren’t property!
- Etc. etc
- Mary Shelley – raised in this incredible environment –
- Total change – her mom was a proto-feminist –
- Her dad was a brilliant writer and thinker and friend of many key players in the above
- As she grew up, her new husband was Percy Bysse Shelley – a very famous and brilliant writer and poet
- What kind of life is normal to her?
- She was a brilliant, challenger of the norm, a thinker, a writer and one who supported some interesting new ideas – including liberalism
- The writing of the book was rooted in a “coffeehouse moment”
- A group of writers was gathered in Switzerland in a storm and they were telling ghost stories – she told one about a dream she had – the dream was about a man made of death who stalked her in her room – similar to the Jewish folklore of the Golem
- Mary’s friends were all engaged in a challenge to write the stories of their ghost stories and see whose was best – she was 18 or 19 and she won
- Her story was based on the dream and combined a lot of the ideas of the Age of Enlightenment –
- It is the first Science Fiction story or any sort
- It came out just as science had become so important
Background Ideas
Science vs Religion – is this battle over? Certainly not. We live in a time when the exact same arguments are still going on with no obvious end in sight
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